The Atheist Renaissance

(Reprinted from the issue of June 6, 2007)

Last
week, having some loose change in my pocket,
I splurged on three recent best-selling books by militant atheists:
Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great), Richard Dawkins
(The God Delusion), and Sam Harris (Letter to a
Christian Nation), as well as a shorter, and much more reasonable,
tract by an atheist philosopher, Julian Baggini.

Im still
reading the three best-sellers. Not many surprises, since they have already
received lots of publicity and some hilariously deflating reviews. In essence,
they all offer versions of the Phil Donahue argument: How could a benevolent
Creator permit the existence of mean old nuns?

The arguments are
pretty bad, ignoring the first rule of honest controversy: State your
opponents position in a form he could accept as accurate. Only
Bagginis little book, Atheism, passes this basic test.
The others rely heavily on accusation, overstatement, ridicule (Dawkins
terms believers dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads), and the like.
Banalities abound: Crusades, jihads, the Inquisition, and
televangelists are adduced without much distinction as conclusive proof of
what religion leads to.

And atheism?
Doesnt it too lead to rough stuff at times? No, our authors explain,
Stalin doesnt really count as an atheist, because he behaved like a
believer. As one of Hitchenss reviewers commented, this is the kind
of argument that gives syllogisms a bad name.

Harriss book
is just childish. Hitchens, though sometimes surprisingly empathetic with
believers (having painfully lost his own Communist faith), knows a smattering
about an awesome number of subjects (you may be less impressed with his
erudition when he deals with ones you are familiar with). Dawkins is probably
the smuggest of the three  something of an achievement, in this
competition.

The real trouble with
all three authors is that they appear to be perfect strangers to religious
experience. A huge area of humanity is closed off to them. They speak of
believers as suckers, as if gullibility could explain everything; for them there
are no varieties of religious experience, only one kind, and
that a contemptible one.

The logic of belief is
crudely parodied rather than seriously explored. Not that this prevents them
from accusing the suckers of cunning malice when it suits their purposes.
Well, which is it?

The point is that you
should at least be able to imagine your opponents point of view, if
your object is anything but mere defamation. And on this score, I have to
commend Baggini. He is scrupulously fair and precise; he was raised a
Catholic, but exhibits no trace of rancor; he tries to define, isolate, and
answer the central questions without rhetorical gimmickry.

No wonder
hes not on the best-seller lists. Maybe he doesnt believe in
God, but he doesnt seem to hate God.

Alas, even Baggini
joins the others in the great atheist dogma: He too assumes that Darwin has
destroyed the argument from design. Does all atheism depend on the
Darwinian revelation? If so, I feel sorry for it.

If I may draw my own
lesson from history: Whenever the atheists get their way, its never
long before they start persecuting each other.

Marx was lucky he
didnt live to see the triumph of Marxism.
Compulsory Fads

Liberalism seems to be prone to a special
kind of bigotry: demanding that people who reject its premises accept its
conclusions. The other day a writer I usually enjoy and respect wrote casually
that of [Franklin] Roosevelts greatness there can be no
question.

Doesnt that
depend on whether you believe in the U.S. Constitution, limited government in
some sense, alliances with the Stalins of this world, slaughtering civilian
populations, and so forth?

I
should think the creation of the atomic bomb would by itself give even a liberal some
qualms about celebrating the memory of FDR.

Liberals tend to think
their latest enthusiasms impose moral duties on the rest of us. Consider the
instant orthodoxy about global warming and the necessity of virtual
totalitarian government power to control it. I can well believe that the planet
is heating up; but if so, I suspect that the sun has more to do with it than
the automobile (or is it second-hand smoke? I can never keep these things
straight).

Ive already
mentioned the Darwinian orthodoxy. Liberals want the public schools to make
our children little materialistic atheists, sensing none of the First
Amendment problems they instantly raise whenever someone urges even a
brief and perfunctory nonsectarian prayer in those schools.

And there are no
limits to it. In Canada and the progressive countries of northern Europe,
where gay rights are enshrined in the legal code, clergymen
may be convicted of human rights violations if they cite scriptural passages
condemning sodomy.

These and other
countries have also made Holocaust denial a criminal offense.
Though I myself have been called a Holocaust denier in print (without
evidence, of course), Id consider it presumptuous for me to
deny the Holocaust, since I cant read German,
dont know a thing about chemistry (what is Zyklon B?), and am quite
incompetent to evaluate the evidence.

These are only a few
of liberalisms sacred tenets. One might cite many more, from Lincoln
and the Civil War to contraception and sexual freedom, on which intelligent
skepticism is not exactly welcome in liberal precincts.

If you now believe in
things practically everyone believed in only 50 years ago, you risk being
called a bigot, and maybe even being prosecuted as a criminal.

In fact, even keeping
an open mind about certain matters is now considered a sign of bigotry. And
they talk about the Dark Ages!



If you play
Monopoly, you can still buy Park Place or Boardwalk for a mere $2,000. The
value of a Milton Bradley dollar has stood up pretty well since 1932; compare
the Federal Reserve System over the same period.

Regime Change
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